What does wild card stand for in Linux?

Answer 1

What they mean in any computing terminology: A way to allow the computer to match ANY character (Or series of characters) to where your wildcard is.

A ? wildcard allows the system to figure out a single letter in its place, for example:

d?g might get you a list containing dog, dig, or dug, but NOT dang, or dung, as those are multiple character substitutions.

d*g would get you everything d?g would find, but also throw in any word matches that could fit involving any number of letters in its place while still being a recognized word, for example the command:

rm -v *.pkg*

would remove ANY file in the current directory you have permissions to modify that has ".pkg" ANYWHERE in its name, as it can match any number of letter preceding or following. Thus, rm -v * would remove ALL files it can see that you have access to non recursively. Naturally I don't need to warn you about the dangers of using a powerful and dangerous Linux command as root with a wildcard, as you can cause irreparable damage to your system.